Original Sin
by Killing Joke
Summary: The confessional booth in one of Gotham's churches has heard a lot of tales of woe, but the Joker's involvement has made this one into a sinister shaggy dog story.
1. Chapter 1

**ORIGINAL SIN**

_Author's Note: Finally, I got around to typing up the first chapter of this. More chapters to follow! _

**Disclaimer: Batman and related characters are the property of DC Comics. I write these stories purely for the love of it and am making no money from them.**

_"Tell me how, you know now, the ways and means of getting in underneath my skin…you were always my original sin…" __- Elton John_

Outside in the city, the sky itself seems heavy. The yellow-grey clouds push down on the steeple of St Michael and All Angels , as if they are trying to puncture themselves on the dirty golden spire and let out the warm, thick rain to fall like tears on the baking streets below.

It has not rained for days. The still, oppressive weather continues unabated, unseasonably hot, even for late spring. Tempers amongst Gothamites are frayed to breaking point: the newspapers comment on it. Incidences of domestic violence are common, sales of alcohol and painkillers are booming, and in the alleys even the street children fight until the muggy atmosphere saps their energy.

Inside the church, it is almost comfortable by comparison. St Michael and All Angels is the oldest building in the district by far, sticking out incongruously into the sluggish lanes of city traffic like a slumbering grey animal. On each side, skyscrapers that shine with their skins of bright metal and glass rear up into the overheated air. The little church, with its tiny strip of churchyard and broken lych-gate, is a remnant from a bygone age, robbed of its authority and grandeur by the neighbouring modern tower blocks.

Modern air-conditioning, however, has nothing on the inside of a well-built catholic church. The priest, Father Henley, regularly finds himself having to encourage the vagrants and loafers who treat the nave as a convenient dosshouse away from the unbearable heat to move on. He often has to point out that yes, although God is merciful, just and kind, He does not necessarily look kindly upon teenage junkies shooting up in His pews and dumping used sharps in His font.

Father Henley's dream is that one morning he will wake up, walk down to the church and when he walks out again in the evening he will somehow miraculously have been transported to the streets of a far more rural parish, a long way from the uncaring tourists and the endless, mindless vandalism.

So far, a miracle has not been forthcoming. It is almost midday on the Tuesday of a week that shows no signs of breaking the oppressive spell of weather, and the vagrants have been gently persuaded out of their new hiding lace behind the roodscreen. St Michael's is empty under the syrupy heat, the old stones and timbers seeming almost to hold their breath.

The heavy wooden doors swing open cumbrously: a light step falls on the warm stone steps that lead down into the welcome chill of the nave. A genuine supplicant before the Lord has entered His house. Her hesitant move forward, sidestepping the font and focussing on the golden lectern with its shining arched wings, seems to break the tension. With a real visitor at last, one with a genuine need and desire to be there instead of the dozens of tourists and addicts who crossed its threshold every month, the church breathes again, lives again.

The woman is plainly if expensively dressed - elegance and simplicity are written in the fitted lines of her cream skirt and little summer blouse. The right sleeve of the blouse is pulled into her palm where she grips it tightly, despite the sweat that is gathering there, and when she stumbles, very slightly, on her dainty white kitten heels , she gives a little cry of alarm utterly disproportionate to the shock of the event.

Like many people who find themselves drawn as true believers to the house of God, she has come here in a time of personal crisis and fear because she can think of nowhere else better for her to be. She regains her balance, moves forward swiftly and to the left, and steps decisively into the tiny confessional booth, closing the door behind her.

The confessional is the second oldest fitting in St Michael's, and has suffered somewhat over the years. Like the oldest, the roodscreen, it bore the brunt of the attack of woodworm during the seventies. Carefully treated, it survived, and weathered the roof leak of the nineties without more than a little warping of the door frames and a few odd water stains on the red seat cushions inside. The warped doors now require a little golden hook inside to keep them shut, and the woman's well manicured nails receive a few scratches as she fumbles with the hook and fastens it. Her own breathing, fast with fear, echoes back at her as she finally settles back in the confines of the cubicle. It slows. She starts to relax. The cool of the church air feels good on her flushed face. For one short moment she closes her eyes, and it feels as if the world and all its cares have dropped away, leaving only this blessed coolness and silence.

Then she hears the shift of a body in the other side of the confessional, the gentle swish of clothing being settled comfortably, and she takes a hurried breath.

"Father?" Are you there?"

"I'm here," says a mellow, male voice, sounding as weary as she with the heat, and with that comforting edge of solicitous concern that all priests seem to have. "What can I do for you?"

She tries to dredge up her memories of the ritual.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned….it, uh….I mean… I haven't…"

She senses the priest's gentle shake of his head.

"Don't worry about that. I know why you're here," he says. "After all, you're in the confessional, aren't you?"

She almost laughs. "Yeah…I guess I am. So do I, like, just…?"

"Just tell me what's troubling you," he says, patiently, "and we'll see what happens from there, shall we?"

"Okay." She seems almost disappointed. "I _am _a catholic, you know, Father. Since I was a child."

"God is aware of everything, my dear." He falls silent, creating a void of sound which she is suddenly desperate to fill.

"It's my boyfriend, Father," she says. "He…he's dead. He died yesterday, and I don't know what to do."

Silence from the other side of the booth.

"When I say died, Father, he was murdered. And I want you to hear me out before you tell me to go to the police or anything, because I spent all night thinking about it and it isn't an option."

She stops, almost defiantly, but all the priest does is clear his throat slightly and waits for her to continue.

"He's back at my apartment now. It's terrible. I couldn't sleep there, so I went to a hotel. I don't want to go back. The heat…you know…I just can't face it." She sounds oddly dispassionate. Her fingers roam over her knees, automatically brushing down the short cream skirt. "There wasn't as much blood as I thought there would be. In the movies there's always lots of blood."

Again she pauses.

"Don't you want to ask me how he died, Father?"

"I'm not here to ask, child, I'm here to listen."

"At first I thought he'd used the kitchen knife." Although he specifically hasn't asked, she has to tell him. Keeping the words in has been like holding a mouthful of slow poison. Now it all bubbles out like rank-smelling foam in an unstoppable stream. "But it wasn't. I counted all the slots in the knife block, but they were all there except the one I left in the sink after chopping the tomatoes on Sunday night. Normally I'd've washed up straightaway, but…" She stops the drift. "And there was so little blood, just a little trickle, just under his chin. I though it was his hair, just a curl of his hair, trapped under him when he fell.

"So I went to turn him over, and Father, I knew he was dead the moment I did. There was so little blood because it was like a nosebleed, just a bad nosebleed, except that his face looked wrong." She gives a hiccup of suppressed, hysterical laughter. "I didn't know what it was at first. Any kid on any street corner could have told me, but you don't think, do you? You don't see things where you don't expect them, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean." His voice is oddly flat, but she's too worked up to notice.

"Pez dispensers!"

A thin stream of dust trails down, sparkling in the filtering sunlight, in front of her face. "A Pez dispenser up each nostril, jammed up so far all you could see was the stupid cartoon head. Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald. Mickey had a blood clot on his face so big it made him look like he had no eyes.

"Funny isn't it, Father, the things you notice?"

She leans back against the worn wood, tilting her head up to stare at the ancient ceiling with its pinprick woodworm holes.

"And so I knew he was dead, and who had killed him, and it was my fault, my stupid fault. If you've heard of the Joker, you'll know why I can't go to the police. They can't do anything. They keep putting him away, but he's too smart, he keeps getting out."

"Why would you think it was your fault?" comes the question from the shadows behind the screen. The priest's voice has an edge to it now, understandable given the circumstances. The woman lets out a hiss of breath through her painted lips and brings her feet back sharply to drum against the base of the confessional seat.

"Because he was only being what I wanted him to be, Father. I wanted a man who was somebody. I didn't want to be a girl on the arm of a two-bit car thief. I wanted Ben to be a name I could use in conversation at all the right parties and that people would gimmie a bit of respect.

"I wanted a man who could beat the devil himself. So I brought the devil to our door."


	2. Chapter 2

**ORIGINAL SIN**

_Author's Note: Been very busy, but finally got this typed. _

**Chapter 2**

The devil is not the devil because of what he does. Anything that the devil does can be perpetrated by mortal man. The devil is the devil because he finds entertainment in it. In the stained glass of the church windows above the confessional, the snake lies coiled around the whole length of the tree while Adam and Eve stand, oblivious, on its tail and the eyes of God gaze down, unseeing of all but the stolen apple.

"I got Ben a job at the Joker's club, The Wild Card, three weeks ago. I knew a guy whose brother was seeing one of the cocktail girls there, and he told me the Joker was on the lookout for new muscle. I guess you wouldn't know about this, being a priest and all, but pretty much all of the deals that go on at the Wild Card are straight legal and above board. But the place has that grinning devil's name and reputation plastered all over it, and stupid that I was, I wanted it."

Silence from the other half of the booth.

"Ben didn't really want to. He said it was because he genuinely enjoyed the car business and couldn't see himself as some clown's goon. But really I think he was afraid." Her voice has an odd level of respect in it. "Afraid of his new boss, and who could blame him? I persuaded him that although it was the Joker's club, the guy would probably hardly ever be there. He'd just take his orders from some head bouncer and I'd be able to tell those stupid bitches - sorry, Father - who I play poker with that my guy worked for the big J, the biggest noise in the city's underworld. It was simple and the money was regular, and I thought the risk was worth it.

"It's all about who you know in my world, you know? If I don't know the right people, wear the right clothes and say the right things, I'm nobody, and I can't live if I'm nobody." Her voice has a hard, ugly edge to it now, born of dual types of fear - fear of social invisibility and fear for her life.

"Like advertising, right? You don't keep your head above the scum on the surface of the water where people can see it, people forget about you and you drown."

She falls quiet as she thinks about this. There is the soft sound of cloth against cloth in the priest's side of the booth, as if he is shifting his position, crossing his legs perhaps.

"Anyway. He worked there fine for a fortnight. Doing grunt work in the warehouse, mostly, but that was okay, he'd have been able to move onto debt collection or even security work in time. He was even getting to like it, he got his meals there and he didn't have to spend all his time keeping out of the way of the cops. When he told them he was good with cars they let him into the Joker's garage and told him to spruce up the stuff in there. That was two days ago. He came home so excited and wouldn't stop talking about it. Apparently the guy has a whole fleet of really fancy cars. Sporty cars, limos, vintage cruise mobiles, the whole lot. Ben loves - loved - cars. And he loved me then, too, loved me for getting him the job where he got to tend to the needs of so many expensive machines."

She sighs, her slim shoulders drawing up, brushed by the gold hoops in her ears.

"But yesterday I don't think he loved me so much anymore."

A silence falls in the church. The ancient beams creak a little in the merciless heat, and outside the traffic labours past ceaselessly. Police sirens wail in the streets several blocks away, and the woman presses her hand to her knee, anxious.

"He found a whole load of explosives in the trunk of the purple limo. They only asked him to wax it because the Joker was due to be going out to some kind of evening function and needed it. Ben wanted to do a good job, so he thought he'd make sure the whole car was really clean.

"I mean, sure, the Joker uses explosives. Everyone knows that, right?" Her tone is defensive. "He should have given the stuff a spritz of polish and left it well alone, right?"

The priest does not answer. The air is full of his attentiveness, as if behind the screen he is leaning forward to hear more. The woman blinks as she sees his shadow move behind the obscuring mesh.

"I loved Ben, Father, but Lord knows he was never too bright. He just didn't have enough smarts to become a real mechanic so he ended up stealing cars and welding old write-offs together. I should have listened to my mother and got myself a clever guy who would have known when not to run his mouth off. But you rarely get a smart guy who's got the looks as well as the brains, huh?

"So he's looking at the bombs, and they're all made up like little party favours, in all sorts of bright colours with pictures of bunnies and kittens and stuff, and he almost picks one up, then a voice behind him says "Naughty, naughty!" and a cane with a grinning gold jester's head smashes down on his finger, skinning his knuckles.

"And the Joker's standing there with the two head bouncers in tow and one of those huge cardboard cheques in his other hand - you know, like the ones you see on TV charity phone-ins. So Ben says "Fuck!" in surprise - sorry, Father - and drops the little bomb he was touching.

"The Joker swoops down with one hand and catches it, so fast, so very fast, and brings up the cane again at the same time, smashing it into Ben's mouth. "Language!" he rebukes. "We'll have to wash your mouth out. Oh well. You know what they say. Dirty mind, dirty body." And he pushes Ben back into the wall carelessly. "Dirty boy, touching the children's presents. Pervert. Let's move, boys."

She takes a long breath and lets it out in a sigh. The sense of attentiveness behind the screen of the confessional has never wavered. The priest's voice is apparently calm.

"Go on."

The woman's bright blue eyes look up from where she has been staring at her hands with their long red nails, clasping and unclasping in her lap.

"That's about all there is, Father. That was yesterday. I came home from work and found Ben dead on the floor." She covers her face with her hands and a little, indeterminate choked sound escapes her. "Wash his mouth out. I didn't tell you, did I? What I found next to the body - to Ben." She pauses, almost as if for the maximum effect. "A packet of those fizzy tablet things that old people use to clean their false teeth. Can you believe it?"

"Yes. I can." The priest's response is immediate. The woman's head remains bowed, he pretty face cupped in her palms. Her voice is muffled.

"I guess the Joker must've really wanted to clean out Ben's mind, huh?"

Her voice has that tremor of nervous energy to it that speaks of a soul on the edge of hysteria. The priest is silent once more, as if he is thinking deeply about all he has heard, and then he says:

"How did you know all this, child?"

The woman looks up, her eyes searching the shadow cast on the obscuring screen. Her fear seems to have returned in a rush, and the long red nails go back to gripping at the knees under the little skirt.

"W-what?"

The priest's voice is patient. "If all this only happened yesterday, and when you came home yesterday you found Ben dead on the floor, how did you know what happened between him and the Joker at the club?"


	3. Chapter 3

**ORIGINAL SIN**

**Chapter 3**

_Author's Note: I know, it's taken forever to get this final installment up. I hope, if anyone's still reading this, that it turns out to be worth the wait. _

There is the very slightest of pauses.

"We live in the electronic age, Father. He called me on my mobile at work and told me all about it. He was terrified - he had to tell somebody."

More sirens scream past outside, and a little more dust trickles from the roof of the battered confessional. The priest is quiet, and the woman leans forward.

"You see why I can't go to the police. The Joker will kill me too. He knows where I live. I can't even go back and do anything about Ben's body, Father, I'm too scared."

"I understand your fear, but I'm afraid I can't leave this," says the voice of the priest, and he does sound sad, weary - and not a little angry. "From what Ben told you I'm guessing the Joker is heading for one place tonight: the Gotham Children's Benevolent Fund Charity Gala."

The woman takes in breath in a sharp gasp. The priest's voice continues, relentless.

"You must go to the police. They will not blame you. They will protect you. Think of the children, and the hundreds of innocent people he plans to kill at that gala tonight. They deserve to be warned."

The woman turns her head away from the screen, into the shadows.

"I can't!"

The door on the priest's side of the confessional creaks as it opens, and his steps echo in the nave as he emerges. The woman jumps as the door of her own booth rattles, but the tiny golden hook that holds the warped door in its frame remains in place: the door stays shut.

"Think of Ben," the priest's voice says, from just outside. "You couldn't save him, but you could help save all these people."

The woman squeezes her knees, childish in her anxiety.

"Ben used to come here, you know," she said. "He was a good guy, church every Sunday. He wanted me to go with him."

"I know."

"He was going to come to confession today. Had it written down in his diary." Her voice falters. The voice from outside the door is low, mellow again.

"I know."

"I thought, you know, if I came instead, perhaps…perhaps…"

Into the gap of her inability to continue, he speaks, and his voice is sincere, comforting.

"It isn't your fault. Go in peace. Your sins - " he pauses "Your sins are not the sins you imagine. Go to the police."

The nave rings with his footfalls as he turns swiftly and strides up between the pews. Black cloth catches on the worn carved edges of the font as he passes. And behind him, in the far left corner, there is a tiny metal scrape and click as a little golden hook is unfastened and the woman pokes her blonde head out into the cool of the church.

She is just in time to see her confessional partner's shadow, cast by the light from the big red-and-green arched window above the doors. No servant of God, this - gods do not tend to recruit men who wear saturnine cowls topped by sharply pointed ears. The black cape flicks once before vanishing out into the overheated streets, and the heavy doors of St Michael's whisper shut behind him with barely a creak of protest.

The woman slips out of the booth cautiously, her full lips parted in an "O" of apparent surprise, her kitten heels making little tap-tap-tap sounds as she tip-toes across the dusty stone floor. When she is sure he has gone, she reaches up and undoes the elegant little bun she's had her sleek blonde hair tied in, giving her head a shake.

The blow seems to come out of nowhere, a ringing open-handed slap to the side of her head. She falls with an outraged and whining cry, grazing her forearms on the flagstones. A black and white patent leather shoe prods her in the stomach, disdainfully.

"I thought, you know, if I came instead, perhaps…" The Joker snarls, in an ugly masculine parody of her girlish voice. The girl twists at his feet, turning to try and face him, the elegant cream skirt hiking up around her hips. The Joker's grin is a savage baring of teeth framed by blood red lips: he continues to mock her, imitating her. "Oh Ben. How I loved you, Ben. It was all my fault, Ben. If only you hadn't been such a complete chowder head, Ben."

The woman controls the tears that prick unwanted at her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her face, seconds before the Joker's white fingers snag her frilly blouse and he hauls her unceremoniously to her feet.

"Honestly," huffs the Joker, inspecting her closely, her face inches from his as she sniffles loudly, "women. Can't be trusted to do anything right, and jeez do you look a state. Ahh, stop crying. What, did someone die or something?"

The woman's red-painted pout deepens: the shining, full lower lip trembles.

"But I did it," she wails. "I told him everything you asked me to!"

The Joker snarls again, massive teeth snapping together so close to her nose that she flinches, blinking rapidly.

"I told you to make me sound ruthless! I wanted you to dazzle him with my sheer, boundless appetite for cruelty to the young and the clueless! And what do I get? Almost half an hour of slushy crap the script jockeys on Sunset Beach woulda turned down!" He is breathing hard now, the words rattling out between his teeth like machine-gun fire, and the blazing green eyes are as virulent as acid. His dark green fingernails dig painfully into her neck, hard enough to bruise. The Joker's anger itself seems a physical thing. This close, his rage bathes the woman like scalding water. "Ben this. Ben that. The guy's dead and he's still raining on my parade!"

He hurls the woman away from him and she gasps as her back strikes a pillar, cringing away from the follow-up blow she knows is inevitable.

It does not come.

Flinching with every tiny movement, she relaxes her screwed-up face and dares to open one big blue eye. Still nothing. The Joker is standing in front of the big Garden of Eden stained glass window, with his sharply angular purple-clad back turned to her. A rhythmic, dusty slapping announces that he is tapping his foot, crossly.

It takes a few more seconds for it to dawn on the woman what the real issue here is, but when it does she breaks into a beaming smile, radiant and pixie-like.

He's jealous. Actually jealous.

"Awwww, puddin'," she coos, sneaking up behind him and reaching up to tie her hair back into its habitual pair of bunches. "You know I only said all those things about that good to make the Bat-sap believe I was really his girlfriend." She slips her arms around tense, unwilling shoulders and shudders gleefully at the resulting growl. "Don't be mad, baby. It was just acting, ya know, make-believe." She pets his shock of green hair as she would a puppy, nuzzles into the familiar scent of his shoulder. "I wanted to make it really believable, and it was real scary, just that little bit of wood between me and the Big Bad Bat."

His sharp profile turns towards her just a fraction, so she can see the blade of his long nose, the gash of his mouth.

"You were scared?"

She pouts again, nodding so her blonde bunches bounce. "Uh-huh."

Mercurial as a child, he whips round to face her, hands that were aiming to bruise mere moments before now stroking solicitously at her cheeks, stroking over her hair lovingly.

"And yet you do all those scary things for lil ol' me?" he purrs. She smiles, rubbing into his hand and pressing a lipstick kiss to the centre of his palm. "Harleykins. My best girl. All that acting must have been such hard work."

"Don't forget sitting with that goon's dead body!" she sulks. "Ick."

The Joker drags her in against him, grins at her tenderly, and ducks his sharp head to brush the rictus smile against her lips, too briefly, and she sulks more as he pulls back.

"Have I told you," says the Joker sweetly, "how homely you look when you do that? As a reward for all your hard work, dear, shall I let you play with Father Henley?"

The pout vanishes. Harley squeaks and bounces on her heels, while her real boyfriend throws back his head and laughs.

"Can I, puddin'? Can I? Do we got time?"

"Oh, plenty," says the Joker, magnanimously. "Especially now dear old Batsy's going to be putting on the soup and fish and heading out to that stuffy gala. I do hope he remembers his Pepto-Bismol. The canapés at charity gigs are always awful. They just don't spend enough money on the catering."

She follows him, curling around him like a kitten, as he kicks open the door to the vestry and advances on the priest who is tied to a chair, his terrified eyes flicking to follow the madman's every move. Father Henley had been alarmed enough by the arrival of Batman several hours earlier, and had only agreed not to go out and take confession with great protest: but the arrival of the Joker, while Batman was closeted in the confessional, had been pure gut-wrenching terror, enough to test the faith of the most pious holy man. Harley pats the priest's pale cheek coquettishly, and looks up with adoring eyes as the Joker stands back to give her room to play.

"What _are _we gonna do tonight, Mistah J? Seein' as we don't get to go to the gala."

The Joker leans his thin face on one hand and passes her yet another Pez dispenser, Yogi Bear this time.

"I don't think it matters, do you, Harls?" he grins as she strips away the priest's gag and the man draws a huge, lurching gasp. "What matters is we're not doing what Batsy _thinks_ we're doing…." He tips his head back and trills a laugh. "You know, it's these little moments that should show him just how much I care. He'd be so bored without me."

The screams of Father Henley make the stained glass Garden of Eden window ring and the dust motes dance in the cool of the nave. God's eyes look blindly down on Adam and Eve, while around the base of the tree the snake lies coiled, forked tongue between its fangs, and smiling.


End file.
